Seedlings and Randomness...

Pics of our seedlings. We (read "I") forgot to label them so we will have to wait until the mature to figure out what's what. LOL Anyway, here are the pics.

Here are a couple of random bonus pictures for your viewing pleasure...

Picture Updates

Planting seeds. The kids planted the first batch, but of course we forgot to take pictures in all the excitement. The first batch was veggies and herbs. The set above is flowers and herbs. I'm so excited. I hope they come up!

 Those big worms are the wrong worms. They are called nightcrawlers. The reason they may not work is because the dig tunnels that are so big that they may cause the dirt in a small bin like our to collapse and kill them. Then you are stuck with a stinky mess, not to mention the poor worms being buried alive. They are in our yard where we have the best soil anyway, making the contribution. We didn't waste our money on the wrong worms, we simply changed the fate of some very helpful creatures. :)

Okay, so here we they are with the correct worms. Red wigglers. They are small and, from what they lady at the Reedy Creek Nature Museum said, very veracious eaters. She had what used to be a bin of newspaper that had been converter into lovely aromatic worm poop--I mean castings. The worms and paper mites have a symbiotic relationship and it helps move the process along a lot faster apparently.

Sunshine looking like sunshine. Beautiful, natural, and free! Gotta love it!

African American Homeschool Mamas

I gotta tell ya, being a minority within a minority is really hard. Why? Only a person that is, or at least thinks they are, part of the majority would ask such a question. When it is "Black History Month", I want to go with other people that understand the looks of pity, that some people give when the tour guide mentions slavery. I want to be around people that share the same history and background as I do so that we can teach our children accurate history rather than the same 3 famous African Americans (Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Harriet Tubman) and slavery. I don't want you child hair molesting my child because my child's hair is the polar opposite of your child's hair. It is also hard to be a minority within a minority that is within yet another minority because I am what is considered to be a African American secular homeschooler. I have experienced firsthand that not all groups that say "all are welcome" mean it. I can't honestly say if it was my skin or that I didn't belong to the church that apparently they all belonged to, but I drove 30 minutes to a park day where the people wouldn't talk to me and their kids totally ignored my children. For the record, my children are very hard to ignore. All that to say, I found one homeschool Mama online in a group that lives here and I met another at a birthday party. Although my children attended school with the second Mama's children, we had never formally met. Anyhoo, apparently I needed to vent and express my joy in finding other Afrikan Mamas in the area. Now, I hope that we actually have something in common.

Little update...

Sorry, I've been absent but I am actually been really busy. This homeschool thing is really going well. I am excited that I might actually be doing what works for us. What is that you ask? Depends on the day and what is going on around us. I have stopped stressing every little thing, but I also have not gone completely over to unschooling like I thought I would. My children at this point are not autodidactic enough for me to feel comfortable just turning them loose. I can say, however, that we all seem to be enjoying ourselves. What does our day look like? Well, here is the intention of the day, although it never really happens in the way it's written, but I just use it as a guide.

I try to do all this stuff in the morning when they are fresh. We tried doing work at night when the little ones are gone, but it didn't work out so we decided to do it throughout the day. I don't really care what order they do their work in as long as most of it gets done. If we have been working longer than expected we might decide not to do an assignment like we did today. I will also things off to take advantage of nice weather like today. Imho, vitamin D and fresh air are just as important as education in some regards. It's called balance.

• Morning ritual-Sankofa Learning Academy Pledge, Virtues of Ma'at, Nguzo Saba
• Swahili Cards
• Mama Read
• Assignments
• Black History Cards

Mari
Read
Playing Card Algebra
Swahili-Rosetta Stone
DSI word game
Spelling words

David
Math- 3 worksheets and 25 flash cards
Read- 3 books and 25 flash cards
Time4learning
Penmanship-3 sentences from flashcards
Days of the week and months of the year-English and Swahili


Some random pics, but here is a little explanation on some of them. I can't figure out how to add comments after the pictures have been posted. I learn that later I guess. Enjoy!

Playing in the mirror at the museum. Sunshine did a tattoo on my neck that I thought was really cute. The fireplace is ablaze with candles, because this is what we do for meditation. Spike's birthday treats, thanks to Grandma. Sunshine's new hair, the picture at the end is the same thing. The pics where there are a bunch of women in red (and me in the kitchen chopping) are from Sunshine's red party. She started her moon cycle and to celebrate we did a rite of passage. We received a Flat Stanley or in our case a Flat Isaiah, and Sunshine and Spike decided to make a Flat Family. Cool, right?